ion than "suggestion."

Shakespeare finds no rival, not even approximately, either among the old
or the new writers. Here are some of the tributes paid to him.

"Poetic truth is the brightest flower in the crown of Shakespeare's
merits;" "Shakespeare is the greatest moralist of all times;"
"Shakespeare exhibits such many-sidedness and such objectivism that they
carry him beyond the limits of time and nationality;" "Shakespeare is
the greatest genius that has hitherto existed;" "For the creation of
tragedy, comedy, history, idyll, idyllistic comedy, esthetic idyll, for
the profoundest presentation, or for any casually thrown off, passing
piece of verse, he is the only man. He not only wields an unlimited
power over our mirth and our tears, over all the workings of passion,
humor, thought, and observation, but he possesses also an infinite
region full of the phantasy of fiction, of a horrifying and an amusing
character. He possesses penetration both in the world of fiction and of
reality, and above this reigns one and the same truthfulness to
character and to nature, and the same spirit of humanity;" "To
Shakespeare the epithet of Great comes of itself; and if one adds that
independently of his greatness he has, further, become the reformer of
all literature, and, moreover, has in his works not only expressed the
phenomenon of life as it was in his day, but also, by the genius of
thought which floated in the air has prophetically forestalled the
direction that the social spirit was going to take in the future (of
which we see a striking example in Hamlet),--one may, without
hesitation, say that Shakespeare was not only a great poet, but the
greatest of all poets who ever existed, and that in the sphere of poetic
creation his only worthy rival was that same life which in his works he
expressed to such perfection."

The obvious exaggeration of this estimate proves more conclusively than
anything that it is the consequence, not of common sense, but of
suggestion. The more trivial, the lower, the emptier a phenomenon is, if
only it has become the subject of suggestion, the more supernatural and
exaggerated is the significance attributed to it. The Pope is not merely
saintly, but most saintly, and so forth. So Shakespeare is not merely a
good writer, but the greatest genius, the eternal teacher of man kind.

Suggestion is always a deceit, and every deceit is an evil. In truth,
the suggestion that Shakespeare's works are gre